Smuggling as Governance: Variations in Migrant Experiences under Border Externalisation
Third World Quarterly, 1–21 (2026)
DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2026.2695314
Why do some migrants experience protection from smugglers, while others face neglect or abuse? As irregular migration intensifies and border regimes harden, the stakes of these relationships have never been higher. While recent scholarship challenges the portrayal of smugglers as inherently violent, it often overlooks variation in migrant experiences. Drawing on 32 in-depth interviews with Gambian migrants, this article examines how smuggling enterprises’ organisational structures shape divergent outcomes. I develop a theory of endogenous institutions to explain how norms of trust and accountability emerge within smuggling networks. Then, I explore how these are reshaped by state interventions such as police raids. Rather than treating enforcement as having uniform effects, I show that the relationship between smuggling modality and migrant protection is mediated by externalisation: different enforcement contexts interact with distinct network structures to produce variation in trust, accountability and vulnerability. By linking smuggling business models to migrant experiences, this study contributes to debates on criminal governance, informal institutions and migration governance. It shows how actors deemed ‘criminal’ participate in governing mobility through relational systems of coordination and control that are structured by, rather than separate from, the policy architectures of border externalisation.
Documenting the In-Between: Migrant-Centered, Multi-Scalar Epistemologies in Migration Research
Frontiers in Political Science, 8, 1805152 (2026)
DOI: 10.3389/fpos.2026.1805152
Research on irregular migration too often misses the journey itself. Studies of prospective migrants capture aspiration but not experience. Studies of successful arrivals reconstruct journeys filtered through relief and settlement. Neither sample position reaches the phases of transit and return where migration governance is most intensely felt and least visible in policy-centered analysis. This article argues that studying returnees, defined here as migrants who attempted irregular journeys and came back, whether through deportation, voluntary return, or failed crossing, opens an epistemic site that origin- and destination-centered designs cannot access. Drawing on 32 semi-structured interviews with Gambian returnees conducted through a locally embedded partnership, combined with over 1,000 regional transit surveys collected by the Mixed Migration Centre across West African transit hubs, the article demonstrates what a returnee-centered, multi-scalar design makes visible. From this vantage point, migration governance appears not as coherent policy but as a lived sequence of encounters with fragmented authority, negotiated intermediaries, and enforced waiting. These are conditions actively produced through border externalization rather than incidental to it. The article details three interlocking methodological choices that enable this perspective: sampling returnees as epistemic actors rather than policy subjects; pairing retrospective narration with distributional survey data to trace how individual decisions emerge within structural patterns; and building field access through locally embedded Gambian partnerships rather than international organizations, which shapes not only who can be reached but what they are willing to say. Each choice responds to a specific blind spot in conventional migration research designs. Together they offer a transferable framework for studying governance in corridors where affected populations are mobile, criminalized, and structurally hard to reach, and where the methods used to study them are never neutral.
Safeguarding Through Exit: How Security Governance Relates to the Surge of Asylum Seekers
Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 22(2), 429-448
DOI: 10.1080/15562948.2022.2042453
Migration is often explained as either forced or economic. But what if people leave, as the state’s ability to govern declines? I examine whether changes in a state’s governance impact the number of asylum applicants from the country to Europe. I measure state fragility using the Fragile State Index (FSI) from the Fund for Peace (FFP). The dataset’s granularity permits analysis of the relative importance of push factors. I use Eurostat data to measure the European Union’s asylee applications. I control for conflict with the PRIO dataset. My findings suggest asylees may be leaving because of deteriorating security institutions.
Beating the Gun—One Conversation at a Time? Evaluating the Impact of DC’s “Cure the Streets” Public Health Intervention Against Gun Violence
Crime & Delinquency, 71(6-7), 2023
DOI: 00111287231160735
Violence interrupters (VI) operate as mediators after gang-involved shootings to stop retributory shootings. While some cities, like Chicago, have seen initial success, other cities, such as Boston, Newark, and Phoenix have seen little or mixed effects. This is the first evaluation of the Washington DC intervention. I use an interrupted time series model to measure the impact the intervention had on the rates of assaults with a gun using DC Crime Incident data. Recognizing that the Covid-19 pandemic is an important confounding event, I also run two time-series control models, a location control, and an outcome control. My findings indicate that the program was not effective in reducing gun violence.
Working Papers
Human Smuggling and Frontiers in Political Science
Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Experiences of Undocumented Migrants
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